This one was massive, even by Unbound XL winner Rob Britton’s outsized standards. 2,600 km. A staggering 26,000m of elevation gain. 84 hours in the saddle. All squeezed into just nine days of mostly unpaved riding. All far from the FKT routes and races that have defined the road-pro-turned-gravel-campaigner’s career.
A Big Ride Home, as documented in the new film, No Place Like Home, looked a little different than the Saskatchewan-raised racer’s usual exploits.
A familiar finish line
In fact, over a week after leaving Victoria, B.C. Rob’s Big Ride Home finished, quite literally, at his parent’s door step.
“Finishing in Regina was wild,” Rob says of his must unassuming finish line yet. “You ride your bike pretty much the entire way across western Canada then roll up and finish with my mom, my dad, my sisters, my nieces, my best friend. It was really cool.”
Whatever his exact ride time was, it’s not a route any one else is going to repeat. For Britton, that makes his Big Ride Home stand out among his many palmares.
“No one’s really going to get it, other than me, right? It’s not their home. It’s my home,” Britton says. “I wanted to do this because I’ve biked all over the world, I’ve traveled the planet as a pro. But we live in one of the biggest countries in the world and I just experienced big chunks of it.”
A ride five years in the making
The Big Ride Home is the latest step in Britton’s move away from the regimented world of road racing. The idea for the route, though, started five years ago. Back then, he was still officially in Rally kit. When the pandemic hit, Britton was, like other pros with no races to race, looking for some way to stay on the scene.
“I’m probably the only professional rider, I think, that didn’t do an Everesting challenge during COVID,” Britton jokes. Instead, he was drawn into a challenge called Parallels, put on by Apidura. The idea was to see how far you could ride in a straight line, “as the crow flies,” over 24 hours of the summer solstice.
Britton rode the length of Vancouver Island with Taylor Little, a friend from his days of junior racing on the prairies. It was Little’s idea that the ride could benefit WIRTH, an organisation that provides access to mental health supports for those that cannot otherwise afford them. Five years later, The Big Ride Home is still raising support for WIRTH. Along with the connection to WIRTH,…
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